Swimming Upstream
by LiveinLivingColor
Summary: All of the little reasons have piled up, and Pam is tired of waiting. Set two weeks post-Casino Night. Pam/Roy, Jim/Pam.
1. Swimming Upstream

_**The sun disappeared right before my eyes  
My heart turned and walked away  
I gave you the keys to an open door  
And you threw them right back at me  
Once again I'm alone with a pain in my chest  
So sad, so sad, so alone  
The clouds start to gather, here comes the rain  
You meant more than you could know**_

It had been two weeks. Two weeks since she had talked to Jim, two weeks since he'd confessed his love to her, two weeks since he kissed her and made her rethink everything she'd been so sure of. And for two weeks, it had felt like she was tiptoeing around her own house, worried that everything around her would shatter if she looked Roy in the eye.

He had gone out for a drink with his friends from the warehouse, something he'd been doing more often lately. She was used to sitting home alone at night, prepared to pull out her over-watched copy of _Love Actually_ and curl up on her couch, but instead she was sitting on the edge of the cushions, fumbling with her engagement ring.

She had thought about telling him. Thought about what he would say, the possible scenarios whirling their way around her brain. The best case scenario ended with him understanding, but that was something she knew would never find its place in reality. He would yell, she knew. He would ask her why she had kissed Jim back, how she could betray him like that. He'd probably storm out, headed directly for the direction of Jim's house intent on beating the living daylights out of him. And that wasn't a fight she was willing to have, not a risk she was willing to take.

She wondered if Jim had gone to Australia. What possessed her to pick up the phone she didn't know, but she realized she was dialing and could hear it ringing before she could stop herself.

"Hello?"

A groggy voice on the other line, still familiar after the two weeks they'd been apart.

"Hey."

He didn't answer for a while, as if thinking about whether he actually wanted to speak to her.

"Hey."

"How…how are you?"

It sounded lame and not at all what she wanted to say, but it was all she could think to ask.

"I'm okay. How are you?"

"I'm…" she thought about it for a moment, wanting to answer honestly, and ended up with, "I'm tired."

She didn't know if he knew what she meant, but it really didn't matter. She was exhausted, of course, spending most of her nights lying awake wondering what she was doing with the man snoring loudly next to her. But more than that, she was tired of waiting. Tired of wondering whether Roy would ever want to marry her, tired of trying to convince herself that they were the same people they were in high school, tired of wanting so badly to say the things she needed to say and holding herself back.

"So you didn't go to Australia, then."

"No, I didn't."

There was a long silence, and she was reminded of that day on the booze cruise when they stood out on the deck.

"Listen, Jim, I have so much to say to you, and I know you probably don't want to hear it, but there's something I have to do first. I…I'll call you back."

"_You gotta take a chance on something sometime, Pam. I mean, do you want to be a receptionist here, always?_

"_Oh, excuse me, I'm fine with my choices."_

"_You are?"_

How could she be happy with her choices? How could she, when they'd lead her here, sitting alone in the dark?

_**I can't say I miss you  
You're always around  
I can't say I love you  
'Cause you'll cut me down  
I'm wounded and hurt  
And that's my fault  
But I made my decision with my back to the wall  
And I gotta move on from here  
I've done all that I can do  
Yeah I gotta move on from here  
I've been swimming upstream for you**_

Roy stumbled in around eleven, and she was still sitting on the couch, the living room dim and the apartment quiet.

"Hey, Pammy."

She flinched. When had he even started calling her that? Far too long ago, she knew, long enough ago that she hadn't minded it. When had so many things that she had liked about him became nuisances?

"Roy, I…we need to talk."

"Can it wait until the morning? I'm wiped, the guys kept me out pretty late and-"

"Roy, no. We have to talk now."

She had to do this now. Now, before she talked herself out of it.

"We're not the same people we were in high school. And I think that we never had as much in common as we thought. Things…they haven't been right with us for a long time, and I know you must have felt it, too."

"Pam, why are you saying this now?"

"_So you're not doing it."_

"_How did you know?"_

"_Why not?"_

"_No big reason, just…a bunch of little reasons."_

"I don't think, deep down, that you really want to marry me. We've postponed and postponed and I've felt so lonely for so long that I never realized I could have more. We deserve more, Roy, we both do. We deserve more than sitting in different rooms of this house and talking because we feel obligated to. I think we both know this has been over for a long time."

"But Pam," he protested, reaching for her hand, "I love you!"

She pulled away, shaking her head. "Roy, I loved you once, I really think I did. But if you really loved me, if you really believed we could be happy together, you'd _want_ to marry me."

He didn't reply, and she knew it was the truth.

"I can't fight you anymore, Roy. There's so much more. For both of us."

She slid her engagement ring off her finger, and her hand felt empty. Empty, but free. She was shaking when she dropped it into his hand, closing hers over it and giving him one last look, trying to push past the pain that was in his eyes. She vaguely registered grabbing her purse and coat, and she didn't realize she'd walked out the door until she felt the cold air around her outside.

She took a deep breath, running over what had just happened in her head. She replayed the conversation three times before she moved from the front steps, finding her way to her car. She realized, as the engine roared to life, that it hadn't been about Jim.

Except that it had. But her reasoning to Roy had nothing to do with Jim, nothing to do with the kiss they shared on casino night. Breaking off her marriage hadn't been about being unfaithful or wanting more than anything to repeat Jim's words back to him, no matter how true those things were. It had been about Roy, and about herself, and about the fact that things had been wrong long before she fell in love with Jim Halpert. She had been part of Pam and Roy for so long that she'd lost sight of just Pam, and as she pulled out of the driveway, she felt released, done fighting so hard to make their relationship feel like it had at the start.

She looked at her phone. Tempted to call Jim back as she'd promised and confess everything, able to hide behind the fact that he couldn't actually see her face, it wasn't fair. He'd put it all on the line right in front of her, allowing her to reject him or say the words back (and how she'd wished she could have said something other than "I can't."). But now she could. She could say those things, and it was her turn to wait, to let him do with her words what he would, even if that meant getting her heart broken.

She turned left, towards Jim's house, and rolled the window down, letting the cool, fresh air fill her lungs.

_**And I gotta move on from here, I've done all that I can do,**_

_**Yeah, I've gotta move on from here, I've been swimming upstream for you…**_

**A/N: I know, I know, how could I bring up angsty JAM right after the wedding?! Lyrics are from Ra's "Swimming Upstream". I intended this to be a one-shot, but if there are requests for a continuation, I'd be glad to write Pam's visit to Jim.**


	2. The Scientist

_**Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry  
You don't know how lovely you are**_

I had to find you  
Tell you I need you  
Tell you I've set you apart

Tell me your secrets  
And ask me your questions  
Oh, let's go back to the start

Running in circles  
Coming up tails  
Heads on the science apart

Nobody said it was easy  
It's such a shame for us to part  
Nobody said it was easy  
No one ever said it would be this hard

_**Oh, take me back to the start**_

Pam shut the engine of the car, watching the windshield wipers squeak across the glass as the rain poured down over her car. She debated turning right around, thinking she must be crazy to actually be doing this, but she brushed her insecurities away. She had vowed to be more honest, to say what she was really feeling instead of keeping it bottled up inside until it exploded, and she took a deep breath as she opened her car door.

She had driven to Jim's house at least twenty times since the night she had called off her engagement all those months ago. She had turned right back around nineteen of those times, but she nodded to herself, stepping out of the car before she could change her mind.

_Old Pammy's getting what she wants! And…don't call me Pammy._

She half-hoped Jim wouldn't answer the door. Her heart was beating as fast as if she'd just run a 5K, and she was pretty confident that no articulate thoughts would be making their way out of her mouth. But it was too late, and the doorknob turned, the big wooden door creaking open slower than she might have liked. He was standing across the threshold barefoot, wearing sweatpants and a worn Penn State Basketball tee shirt, his hair muffled and his eyes heavy with sleep. She could hear the sounds of a sports game on TV in his living room, and she was a little taken aback by the fact that he was seemingly having a completely normal evening- watching a little TV, dozing off on the couch. It didn't occur to her to question why Karen hadn't been there with him. She, on the other hand, had barely slept in weeks, images of Casino Night flashing through her mind whenever she closed her eyes.

"Hey." He said, surprised, his throat scratchy.

"Hey."

They stood in silence for a moment, staring at each other through the doorframe, both unsure of exactly what they were allowed to say to each other at this point.

"Listen, Jim." She started, halting when she saw the flickering in his eyes. It had been what she'd said to him on Casino Night, hadn't it? "I…I just need to say some things to you, and I need you to promise that you'll hear me out."

He nodded. By now, she was soaking wet, and she asked, hoping it wouldn't throw off her confidence, "Can I come in first?"

He seemed to notice for the first time that it was raining, and hurried to open the door wider to let her into his foyer. With the door shut and the rain behind it, the silence felt much more prominent.

"We both know I'm not very good at this whole speaking my mind thing. I've never been able to tell people exactly how I felt, you being the most significant example. I always thought that if I married Roy, I'd have security. I'd have someone to come home to at night, even if they spent half the week drunk and hit on every waitress we met. I know that you think you misinterpreted things, and I'm sorry I made it seem that way. The truth is, you were right all along. I've liked you since long before Casino Night, but I kept trying to tell myself that it didn't mean anything. But it did. We both know it did."

She looked at him, and he remained silent, allowing her to talk without interjecting.

"I mean, what I'm trying to say is…God, I really suck at this. I'm trying to tell you that you were right about me and you and me and Roy and I just wish I had been able to tell you this sooner. You're with Karen now and I get that, but I just needed to tell you that I love you. There. I needed you to know that I just want you to be happy, even if that's not with me. I was too late, and I get that the door is closed. I just needed you to know."

She took another deep breath. "It's to the point where I can't picture myself without you, and even if that means we're just friends, I'd rather have that than not get to see you at all. I'm done with Roy. We were different people in the end, and there were a lot of reasons that we shouldn't have gotten married. It's just that I never cared about those reasons until I met you."

He looked at her blankly for a moment, and she wondered whether she should just turn around and convince him on Monday that he had been dreaming the conversation, but the thought left her head when his lips hit hers. She felt the electricity of Casino Night, except that this time, he was the one that said "I can't".

"Jim," she whispered, pulling back, "What are we supposed to do now?"

"I don't know." He whispered, still holding loosely onto her hand, "I don't know."

"I think it would be best if I just left." She said softly, feeling her heart telling her the opposite.

"But know," she added as she turned towards the door, "that I'll wait for you."

She walked as quickly and steadily as she could to her car, revved the engine, and waited until she pulled over at the end of the block to lean onto her steering wheel and cry.

_**I was just guessing  
At numbers and figures  
Pulling the puzzles apart**_

Questions of science  
Science and progress  
Do not speak as loud as my heart

Oh tell me you love me  
Come back and haunt me  
Oh and I rush to the start

Running in circles  
Chasing our tails  
Coming back as we are

Nobody said it was easy  
Oh, it's such a shame for us to part  
Nobody said it was easy  
No one ever said it would be so hard

I'm going back to the start


End file.
